Would This Be a Good Week for the British Pound?

Another week has flown by and we find ourselves on the other side of the long Easter weekend. Would this produce good or bad news to reflect upon?

An overview of the currency markets for April 22nd – April 26th, 2019

The British pound started the week with a mild drop from 1.2989 to 1.2980 against the US dollar. Unfortunately, a mild drop can turn into anything but, and that was the case this week as well. A bigger drop to 1.2938 on Tuesday ended up setting the tone for the remainder of the week… well, almost. By Thursday evening the pound had fallen to 1.2896, a cent lower than it had been just a few days earlier. It did perk up to 1.2916 on Friday evening, but this was not enough to give us a good result for the week, nor to recoup our earlier losses.

Could we expect a similar pattern against the euro, perhaps? Beginning on 1.1551 here, we did drop over the first couple of days, sending us to 1.1524 by Tuesday evening. However, the next two days reversed that early trend. By Thursday, we were looking at an exchange rate of 1.1585 – the best of the week thus far. We could not top that on the last day of the week, but we did at least minimise the loss we experienced, finishing on 1.1584 on Friday night.

Moving on now, we find ourselves facing the Hong Kong dollar once more. This often repeats the result seen against the US dollar, so would that be the case against this week? Opening on 10.190, we did see a drop to 10.183 on day one. However, the falls then became more pronounced over the next three days, giving us little hope that we could attain a good overall result for the week. Dropping to 10.115 on Thursday night, we did manage to pull back some losses by finishing Friday on 10.133.

We started the week on 1.9433 against the New Zealand dollar, and while we dropped to 1.9427 on day one, we retained our opening rate by Tuesday night. Things were looking up from there, with 1.9557 our closing rate for the midweek point. However, we had certainly peaked too soon here, because two falls were in store for the pound by the time the week was done. That meant the British pound finished on 1.9385 – some distance lower than the opening rate had been back on Monday morning.

Our final stop takes us to Australia to see if their dollar would carve out a similar path as the Kiwi dollar had. Opening on 1.8160, the pound managed to put together three impressive days of trading here. How impressive? By Wednesday night it was standing on 1.8407. Unfortunately, that was as good as things would get all week. By Friday, that midweek rate was forgotten – replaced by a closing rate of 1.8344 instead.

Notable events in the world of currency

A slight drop in store against the Canadian dollar

From a starting rate of 1.7393, the pound lost only a small amount of ground to finish on 1.7381 against the Canadian dollar.

More of the same against the Swiss franc

Here too, we saw a slight drop for the pound. It opened trading on 1.3179 before gradually slipping to close the week on 1.3170.

Steady rises are strung together against the Icelandic krona

There was better news here as the pound rose from 156.601 to reach 157.718 over the course of the week.

There were no huge changes across the board this week for the British pound, although we did see some more encouraging results dotted around. It was one of those weeks where you could never tell quite what was coming next. Of course, that could describe many weeks on the currency markets. Will it describe next week as well? We must wait to find out whether the British pound will be able to improve on any of the results gleaned from this week’s efforts.